Marian Turski: Labor

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Transcript

Pollin:
So when you got the message, you and your group, your friends, no more schools, no more school, that's it, you have to go to workTurski:
We had to go to work not only because there was no school, because there was no possibility to get a one soup daily. This was the main reason to get some, ah, money. Well listen, sometimes also I am recalling David Sierakowiak and I can share with you. Ah, in the beginning, and all the time it was not only a matter of poor food rations, rations, yeah? It was also a matter of money to buy them to purchase them. Sometimes people used to buy them, sold part of the ration, of the ration, in order to be able to buy out some others, some in addition, not only the black market, just the food coupons. So it was a matter of money and of security because after all, if there was, we understood it just from the beginning that if you are not employed it means you could be, you could be, ah, useful for the Germans you are in danger.

Marian Turski was born in 1926 in Lodz; his birth name was Moshe Turbowicz. The Germans invaded Poland in 1939, and in 1940, Moshe, his parents Eliasz and Helena Rachel, and his younger brother Wolf, were forced into the Lodz ghetto. Moshe attended the ghetto high school and joined a Communist youth group. In August 1944, the Turbowicz family was deported to the Auschwitz killing center, where Moshe’s father and most likely his brother were murdered upon arrival. He was later transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp, and was liberated at Theresienstadt after surviving a death march from Buchenwald. Moshe returned to Lodz, where he was reunited with his mother. Later he married Halina, a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto. Since the end of World War II, Marian Turski has had a distinguished career in Poland as a journalist and Jewish activist.